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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27355369">By Any Other Name</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendlikequeen/pseuds/fiendlikequeen'>fiendlikequeen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Celtic Mythology &amp; Folklore, Fae &amp; Fairies, Frottage, M/M, Magic Realism, Missing Scene, Oral Sex, Pre-Canon, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Supernatural Elements, major character death can get REKT, this is a fix-it fic babey!!!!!, unrequited JCR/Francis, unrequited Sophia/Francis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 02:21:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,549</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27355369</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiendlikequeen/pseuds/fiendlikequeen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis sees him, first, amongst the gnarled branches of a hawthorn: a beautiful stranger, leaning against its trunk with one hand playing amongst the haws-laden boughs.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fall Fitzier Exchange</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>By Any Other Name</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/gifts">what_alchemy</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Irish mythology ahead! Don't give your name to the fae, folks. It doesn't (usually) go well. This fic borrows heavily from Yeats's interpretation of the <em>l</em><em>eannán sídhe</em>. A modernist interpretation is perhaps historically anachronistic for a Victorian fic, but what can you do:</p><p>"The Leanhaun Shee (fairy mistress) seeks the love of mortals...if they consent, they are hers, and can only escape by finding another to take their place. The fairy lives on their life, and they waste away."</p><p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Francis sees him, first, amongst the gnarled branches of a hawthorn: a beautiful stranger, leaning against its trunk with one hand playing amongst the haws-laden boughs.</p><p>Francis is, upon great persuasion, in Banbridge; greater still, he is visiting his childhood home. His late father’s house is a fine one, but the presence of living relations and the memories of departed ones stifling; a few days under its roof has Francis longing more desperately even than usual for a never-ending horizon and a rolling sea.</p><p>Francis manages two days before he flees its doors in search of an open sky. The autumn air is not so crisp nor so invigorating as that of a polar clime, but is sufficient. He rambles through the town until, at last, he feels as though he may draw a breath without the phantom scent of gin stinging in his nose with every gasp.</p><p>It is in a park that he first sees the stranger. He is remarking upon the twisted, stubborn ugliness of a hawthorn tree: an unsightly, misshapen thing, it is. But yet, amongst its contorted limbs is a man, straight and fair as a poplar, with dark eyes and an easy smile. He reclines against the hawthorn’s side, the darkness of his clothes merged with the hawthorn’s near-jet bark. His face is proud and well-featured, like sculpted marble.</p><p>Francis feels, upon sighting such striking loveliness under Banbridge’s gloomy skies, an arresting and pleasant surprise; rather like he has broken open an oyster’s stony greyness to wonder at the sight of a gleaming, perfect pearl.</p><p>The stranger is watching Francis with a glinting gaze. Francis is so taken with him that he does not notice that he is frozen in place, like a hare before a fox.</p><p>Then the stranger smiles like he knows Francis. The hand that has been caressing the blood-red haws crooks itself into an invitation. When the stranger’s tongue darts out to lick his lips, and his teeth are revealed in a bone-white grin, Francis balks. With a furious flush, he turns and hurries away.</p><p>*****</p><p>Francis feels, for the rest of the day, as though he is being watched. At home, when he returns for supper; on the street, when the house’s staleness once again becomes oppressive; in the pub into which he ducks, in search of whisky.</p><p>It is half midnight when he leaves, only half as drunk as he’d like and twice as miserable as before. In the alley behind the pub there is the same stranger, leaning against the wall. He wears the same smile he did before.</p><p>“You’ve been following me,” says Francis, bolder with the whisky than without.</p><p>The stranger cocks his head. “I have?” he asks, with a certain saucy flippancy that sets Francis’s cheeks flaming. The man’s voice is everything Francis loathes for the way it has his eager cock already drooling; plummy, inflected, entirely high-bred. Too unlike Banbridge and too much like another very familiar voice.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>The man makes no protest; a tacit confirmation.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>The stranger arches an inky brow, lets his gaze flicker to Francis’s trouser front. Francis covers himself on instinct, but it is too late.</p><p>“Do you want me to say it?” Francis doesn’t. The man draws closer. “I can show you, instead.”</p><p>Francis’s mouth is dry, and his words are cracked, parched things: “Wh – why would you want…that, from me?”</p><p>“Does it matter why? All that should matter is that I do.”</p><p>“Who are you?”</p><p>“I am,” says the stranger, “whatever you want me to be.”</p><p>What does Francis want? He wants a glass of whisky with no bottom; he wants James Clark Ross’s cock in his mouth; he wants to enter a room and not be ashamed to be seen. He wants a great many things.</p><p>At the moment, he wants this man. He wets his own lips with his tongue. He wants to kiss this stranger’s lovely, proud mouth. Francis no sooner thinks this but he is being kissed, pressed up against the brick wall.</p><p>“I will do what you want, only give me one thing,” says the man. He gets his thigh between Francis’s legs, chafes himself up against where Francis is shamefully hard. Francis can feel a similarly excited member rubbing against him, in turn. “Your name.”</p><p>Francis remembers some dim warning from his childhood never to give a beautiful stranger his name, lest he not be a man; it is only this that stops him from keening out his name for the stranger’s pleasure.</p><p>The man frowns. Francis has no sooner desired his prick fondled but the stranger’s hand is down the front of his trousers, stroking awkwardly.</p><p>“Give me your name,” says the man, with his hand on Francis’s cock. He strokes him slowly and firmly. “Your name.”</p><p>Francis bites back a gasp.</p><p>“Your <em>name.”</em></p><p>“Francis,” he hisses out, at last.</p><p>An odd look crosses the stranger’s face, then – triumph gleams in those glittering eyes, and he bares his teeth with a wolf’s white-fanged smile.</p><p>“Francis,” he says. He presses his lips to where Francis’s pulse thuds hard against his throat. “Francis.” A murmur, as he goes to his knees and frees Francis’s cock to the cool night air. <em>“Francis.”</em></p><p>Francis grips him by the hair, about to ask his name. But the stranger has set his mouth to Francis’s prick, and all Francis can manage is a strangled groan.</p><p>The man makes quick work of Francis; it is a humiliation how little time it takes for Francis to muffle a shout with his fist as he comes in a rush in this hot, hungry mouth.</p><p>The stranger is wiping a trickle of Francis’s spend from the corner of his lips when Francis offers: “Can I – do you want me to do you, next?”</p><p>The man smiles like he has a secret. The moonlight glitters in his eyes and for a moment Francis swears they are black. “I have all I want for now, Francis,” he says, before he rises and goes away.</p><p>The next morning, Francis finds a hawthorn leaf in his bed. When he catches sight of himself in his looking-glass, he finds new grey in his hair.</p><p>*****</p><p>He finds his stranger again the next night, but not by the hawthorn tree, nor behind the pub, though Francis is foolish enough to seek him out in both places. Francis meets him on the street, the man lounging in the arched doorway of a house of which Francis has no memory. In the gloom his face has the bleached-bone paleness of the moon at her zenith and his eyes are deep, dark pools.</p><p>“I’ve been waiting for you, Francis,” he says, pronouncing the name with a curious relish. He is smiling as he did before – as if they share some secret mischief.</p><p>Francis ought to ask how he could, or why he would. But his stranger smiles, and it is at once so confusing and so wonderful to be so desired that Francis cannot manage either a question or a protestation.</p><p>“Come,” says the other man, extending one slim, white hand to him. “Come with me.”</p><p>Francis oughtn’t. But the stranger smiles, and crooks his fingers, and again makes the invocation: “Come with me, Francis.”</p><p>Francis follows him through the door without a second thought.</p><p>The lamps are lit but Francis sees no servant about. The house is quiet and so is this stranger; his footfalls make no noise, though Francis’s set the boards groaning.</p><p>Francis allows himself to be led upstairs to a bedroom. A fire blazes in the hearth, which is just as well – the moment the stranger lays his hand upon Francis’s wrist, Francis shivers. His stranger is clothed only in a dark dressing gown – how is he not cold? When Francis dares to let his hand steal into the garment’s deep neckline, he finds warm, soft skin.</p><p>The stranger encourages Francis’s pawing with a few sweet sighs; even gives a delicious moan when Francis’s searching fingers tweak at a nipple. Eventually he disrobes, revealing a long, slender figure, cloaked in sinew: lithe hips, broad shoulders, and, best of all, a rose-tipped cock rising hot and proud from a bed of dark curls.</p><p>“Do you know,” he remarks, as slowly he helps Francis shed his clothing, “how much I want you, Francis?”</p><p>Francis can hardly believe it – what creature would want him? He thinks back to a rejection at Hobart, to the bounce of golden curls as a head is turned in denial; recalls, with a blistering shame, the pitying smile with which a friend had gently guided a clumsy, searching hand away.</p><p>The man seems to sense Francis’s misgivings. “I do,” he affirms. He kisses one of Francis’s cheeks, and then the other. Francis despises the low whine that escapes him. “I do. But I need something from you for it.”</p><p>There is a price, of course. There is always a price. Francis expects it and is mystified by it by the same token.</p><p>“I require nothing but another name,” he says. He lifts his hands to Francis’s face, stroking Francis’s parted lips with the pads of his thumbs.</p><p>“I’ve already told you my name.”</p><p>“It is not the only one a man has.”</p><p>Francis considers this. “Crozier,” he says at last. “My name is Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier.”</p><p>“Crozier,” purrs the man. He cups Francis’s face, draws him close. Kisses him slowly and sweetly, with the promise of more. “Come to bed with me, Francis Crozier.”</p><p>The stranger receives it with a beatific smile when Francis, clumsy with desire, pushes him onto the bed and clambers on top of him. Francis gives a hurt-sounding yelp the moment his prick brushes against the other man’s, but his stranger does not laugh – instead, he hums his satisfaction and puts his hand around their cocks and presses them together, murmuring little snippets of encouragement.</p><p>Francis desperately ruts himself into the other man’s body, finds his release with his teeth set at the man’s throat and the latter’s arm thrown across his back. This time, Francis is rewarded with the stranger’s climax; when he spends it is with a guttural groan, hardly the dreamy sigh Francis would have expected from such a lissome creature.</p><p>Francis leaves the house while the man is dozing. In the morning, he leaves Banbridge, and thinks that will be the end of it.</p><p>*****</p><p>Francis returns to London, in obedience to a standing order that his presence is required in Blackheath.</p><p>London is nearly as stifling as Banbridge; Francis seeks again an open horizon and a lulling wave. He cannot have that now, but he has the next best thing - the steady affection afforded by James Clark Ross.</p><p>He thinks, absently, of the stranger in Banbridge. Wonders, sometimes, if he imagined the whole thing. The memory nags at him like a persistent ache or a worried scab. He thinks of his stranger no more often than when he sees James by firelight, with the hearth’s glow in his fiery hair. For so long, Francis could think of no man more desirable than James; it is with something akin to shame that now he believes his stranger lovelier by far.</p><p>But it is no matter now, he thinks. He is much too old for this desire now - his bones have begun to ache, and his face is lined.</p><p>*****</p><p>Too old for it or not, he finds himself pursued. He tells himself that he has very nearly forgotten his sometime lover, when he chances a look out his window, and sees a familiar figure leaning against a tree in the park across from Eliot Place.</p><p>There is a full moon, bathing that glinting smile, those glittering eyes. The stranger lifts his hand and beckons.</p><p>Francis is in his coat and halfway down the stairs before he fully realizes it. He is given pause only when Ann is roused by his elephantine tramping down her stairs.</p><p>“Good Heavens,” she says, in that lovely, soft voice of hers. “Whatever is the matter, Francis?”</p><p>“Going,” he says, as he as he reaches the foyer, “out,” he has snatched up his hat, “for a walk.”</p><p>“Mind the damp,” she calls out after him. “You must be careful, Frank.”</p><p>He waves off her concern. The park, when he reaches it, is empty; but he sees, in the distance, a black-coated figure. The figure turns, and crooks his fingers.</p><p>Does Francis imagine it? This cannot be the same man. But the man beckons again – and his smile is unmistakable. Francis watches his mouth move, knows what he says:</p><p>
  <em>Come with me, Francis.</em>
</p><p>Francis obeys without a second thought.</p><p>He follows the stranger to the high street. The other man taunts him, pausing long enough to allow Francis within a few paces, before darting out of reach. He is remarkably fleet of foot. He gives up the chase in the arched doorway of a house that looks remarkably similar to the one in Banbridge.</p><p>Though he presses himself up against the door like a cornered hare, Francis knows himself the prey, the stranger the hunter.</p><p>“I missed you, Francis,” he says, with his bone-white grin. Francis neither asks him how he was found nor demands why. Either one would be the prudent question. The stranger looks down at Francis’s lips. “Did you miss me?”</p><p>Francis gives his answer without pause. “Yes.”</p><p>“Then,” he says, and leans in to rumble a sigh in Francis’s ear, “come upstairs with me.”</p><p>“You won’t ask me my name again?”</p><p>The stranger laughs. “I have your name already.” The way he says it sends a prickle up Francis’s spine. “Now,” he says, taking a fistful of Francis’s shirt. “Come upstairs with me, Francis Crozier.”</p><p>Francis is all too happy to obey. This house is the same as the other; the lamps are lit, but there are no servants about. Francis can hear nothing but his own footfalls as he is led upstairs and into a bedroom.</p><p>The stranger falls upon him, grasping Francis by the jaw and kissing him hard. Francis finds himself crowded up against a bedpost, a grasping hand shoved down the front of his trousers. The moment nimble fingers brush against Francis’s cock, he groans.</p><p>“Jesus <em>God-”</em></p><p>The stranger pulls back but a moment, to regard Francis with eyes flared black. As if the kiss has inflamed his hunger instead of sating it, the stranger lunges at Francis once more. Francis is devoured in a biting kiss, the stranger’s tongue pushing into his mouth.</p><p>It is well enough that Francis only threw his coat over his shirtsleeves and trousers, for the stranger seems to be doing his best to rip the clothing off Francis’s body – he could not afford what meager clothing he has to suffer this strange passion.</p><p>“Wait,” he says, trying to pull away. The stranger chases his mouth like a starving thing a meal. “Wait – for Christ’s sake, please.”</p><p>This gives the stranger pause. “Francis?”</p><p>“We can – we have time,” he says. <em>We can savour this, whatever this is. </em>“I’ve no evening plans. Unless you-”</p><p>He thinks that the other man understands for the way he smiles. He nods, and allows Francis to undress himself.</p><p>Francis undresses the man next, slowly, aware of how his own hands quiver. He removes a dark coat, first; then a waistcoat in deep green, and matching trousers; next, ivory shirtsleeves in soft linen; last, a pair of smalls.</p><p>He has had little time to admire the body laid out for him – a crime, to be sure. This stranger is lovely nearly beyond Francis’s reckoning. So he lays the man down on the bed and sets about an exploration.</p><p>Francis palms the lean lines of him, his broad shoulders, the planes of his chest, the sharp jut of narrow hips. He admires his peaked, tanned nipples – takes one in his mouth and sucks, earning him a soft purr of satisfaction. He kisses that hard jaw, and the bridge of that proud nose.</p><p>“Yes,” says the stranger, when Francis rests his palm low on the other man’s belly. He puts his hand over Francis’s and guides it over his cock. When Francis obliges him with a stroke, he throws back his head and groans. “Oh, <em>yes.”</em></p><p>Francis is nearly overcome at the sight of that long, white throat bared to him. He drops a kiss upon it, and surprises himself with a murmur: “Lovely.”</p><p>The stranger lifts his head and arches one brow, as if the knowledge surprises him.</p><p>Francis lifts a brow of his own. “People must tell you that you’re beautiful.”</p><p>His stranger smiles that white-fanged grin. “They have, in past. Will you?”</p><p>Francis snorts, his attempt at dismissiveness possibly undermined by the fact that he is happily frigging the other man’s cock. “Don’t think you need me to.”</p><p>“I do. I need you to say it.”</p><p>Not for the first time, Francis asks it: “Why?”</p><p>The smile is different now, its cheer brittle and not reaching the eyes. “I need you to see me, Francis. I will do anything, but you must see me.”</p><p>“I’m looking at you now,” says Francis, and he is.</p><p>“You are,” he says, and he dips his chin as if issuing a challenge. There is a thread of desperation in his tone that Francis understands all too well. “Will you still say it, looking at me as you are?”</p><p>Francis has always loathed vanity. It is always those who least need praise that seem to covet it the most. Regardless, this is the price for the magnificent body laid out for his use, and so he obeys.</p><p>“Aye,” he says. “I will, if it will please you. You <em>are </em>beautiful.”</p><p>The man’s brow contracts at this and his eyes flutter closed as he gives a low, pained groan. “Tell me you’ve never lain with anyone more beautiful.”</p><p>That part, at least, is easy for Francis. “Not a one could match you. Not within a mile.”</p><p>In Francis’s hand, the stranger’s cock pulses and produces a rill of enthusiasm.</p><p>“Fuck me, then,” he says, the casual use of the profanity as startling as it is arousing. He takes Francis’s other hand, presses his fingers between his buttocks. The moment Francis’s digits brush the furled hole there, the stranger groans. “Fill me, flood me, <em>use</em> me-”</p><p>Francis has not done this often. “Are you sure?”</p><p>The stranger’s eyes open. “Yes,” he says. His gaze flickers down to Francis’s ruddy prick. “And so are you.”</p><p>Francis fumbles a moment. “I-”</p><p>The stranger sits up and reaches for Francis’s cock. He begins to stroke him with long, slow movements, just this side of satisfying. “I want it,” he tells Francis. “I want you.”</p><p>Now it is Francis who is groaning and leaking. He redoubles his efforts on the other man’s prick.</p><p>“More than anything,” murmurs the other man, leaning in to nip at Francis’s earlobe, worry at the shell of his ear. “Want you inside, Francis.”</p><p><em>Francis. </em>There is a fire like a newfangled coal stove’s burn, low in his belly, that is stoked every time the stranger says his name like that. <em>Francis.</em></p><p>“We’ll need-” begins Francis, but the stranger is already conveying his hand elsewhere.</p><p>Francis turns to see that there is a bottle of oil on the table by the bed. Francis could have sworn it was not there a moment ago.</p><p>“You have all you need, Francis,” his stranger says. He pulls Francis’s face close and kisses him hard. “Now have <em>me</em>.”</p><p>Francis fumbles with the bottle, which does not seem to bother the other man. The stranger pushes Francis’s hand away from his cock so that Francs may use both hands to attend to readying him. He also leaves off Francis’s cock, too, in favour of guiding Francis’s searching fingers between his cheeks.</p><p>The moment Francis breaches him with one finger he cries out; when Francis adds another, this sound becomes a full-throated groan.</p><p>“Is it-”</p><p>The man’s hand forms a manacle about Francis’s wrist, forcing him to work his fingers in and out. His arsehole is a greedy, grasping thing, sucking Francis’s digits down. His cock, red and hard, is leaking, neglected, against his hip. Without a second thought, Francis bends his neck to lick its head. The man gives a low bellow, his other hand landing in Francis’s hair. Francis suckles, all too happily, at the man’s cock as he fucks him now with three fingers.</p><p>“Yes, <em>yes,</em>” the stranger gasps. “Oh, Francis, <em>please-”</em></p><p>To hear his name pronounced with such rapture is beyond anything Francis could imagine. This man wants this, wants <em>him. </em>Francis growls around the other man’s prick, sucking it as far as he can into his mouth. The stranger howls and produces such a spurt that for a moment he thinks that he has spent.</p><p>“Francis,” he says. <em>Francis. </em>He could listen to the stranger say nothing but his name. “It’s not enough, I need-”</p><p>Francis lifts his head. “Need what?”</p><p>“Need you inside. Now.”</p><p>Francis requires no further encouragement than that. When he slicks himself up and slides in the other man screams. When he begins fucking him with deep, hard rolls of his hips, he gets a whimper for each one.</p><p>“Francis, Francis, Francis-” The stranger chants it like a prayer, an invocation, a liturgy.</p><p>Francis takes the other man’s cock in hand, pulling him off in time with his thrusts.</p><p>It is the stranger who comes first, with a toe-curling groan and a torrential rush that paints him from hip to throat. Francis goes on fucking him, his rhythm stuttering only when the stranger hooks his legs about Francis’s back and presses him close. The moment the stranger fastens his mouth over Francis’s, Francis can hold back no longer.</p><p>*****</p><p>“Give me another name,” says his stranger. His head is by Francis’s on the same pillow. He is tracing idle patterns on Francis’s breast, over where Francis’s heart thuds.</p><p>Francis chuckles at that. “I may have more than the average man, but I’ve given you all of mine already.”</p><p>“Then give me someone else’s.”</p><p>“Whose do you want?”</p><p>“One belonging to someone you love.”</p><p>Francis thinks for a moment. “James,” he says, at last.</p><p>The stranger blinks, long and languidly. “James,” he says, as the name is a new glove and he is seeing if it will accommodate a probing hand. “You must call <em>me </em>that, then.”</p><p>Francis kisses him. “James.”</p><p>“James,” his stranger repeats.</p><p>*****</p><p>Though Francis does not see James again for weeks, he is visited in dreams. In sleep, his desire takes all sort of fantastic shapes: chasing him over <em>sídhe, </em>in the County Down, and tumbling with him in the long grass, under the full moon; pressing him up against the rough bark of a hawthorn and listening to his cries echo about the rolling hills; strangest of all but best by far, taking him in the snow, under the crackling <em>aurora borealis, </em>senseless to the cold.</p><p>Francis wakes covered in sweat and sticky with his own seed; hurries to the basin to wash with all the desperation of a guilty adolescent.</p><p>When he finds a bruise on his neck that matches the one with which the phantom James marked him the previous night, Francis tries, mostly successfully, to tell himself it is a coincidence.</p><p>*****</p><p>Foolishly, Francis again asks Sophia to marry him. Quite prudently, she refuses. He cannot blame her for it, but to hear his shortcomings so eloquently outlined is a wound his pride cannot bear; to listen, then to Sir John affirm them is a near-fatal blow.</p><p>He stumbles out of the Franklins’ house and into the nearest pub, determined to drink himself either to death or to sleep, whichever is quicker, when:</p><p>“Francis.”</p><p>James is standing at his elbow, wearing that secret smile. Francis shoves money at the barmaid and drags James to a quiet room upstairs; rips off his clothing and pushes him down on the bed; doesn’t bother to undress further than pulling out his prick as he turns the other man over, spreading him open and fucking his frustration into James’s willing body.</p><p>The latter groans and sighs his delight, urging Francis on. When Francis has spent and withdrawn, he gives a low, satisfied grunt.</p><p>“She could never give you <em>that,</em>” he says, louche with satisfaction. He is idly playing with the trail of Francis’s release, dipping his fingers into the seed leaking from his well-used arse.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“The woman you asked to marry you. What is her name?”</p><p>Francis stuffs his soft prick back into his trousers, all at once feeling filthy and ashamed. He does not know how James knows about Sophia, but it feels like a violation.</p><p>James rolls over and sits up, taking Francis’s face with one of his soiled hands.</p><p>James kisses him, and then he gives his secretive smile. “She will never say yes,” he says. “Because you have already given <em>me </em>your name.”</p><p>There is a sour taste in Francis’s mouth as he shoves James away and stumbles out of the room. He gets only a block away from the house before he is retching up the whiskey that is the meager dregs of his supper.</p><p>*****</p><p>“Ah, Francis,” says Sir John, at a party hosted for the officers of the aptly-named Franklin Expedition. Francis has not been given command of it. The nephew Ross is furious; the uncle for different but equally valid reasons. “Have you met Commander Fitzjames?”</p><p>James Fitzjames. Francis has heard the name bandied about, but has given it little thought except to remark upon its theatrical bent.</p><p>“No, I have n-”</p><p>The words wither like autumn leaves when he is met with a white-toothed smile and dark, gleaming eyes.</p><p>“Captain Crozier,” says Fitzjames, as if they have never met. That selfsame secretive smile. He says the name as if testing its worth, weighing it on his tongue. “A pleasure to meet you.”</p><p>Francis does not manage a greeting, but Sir John blathers on anyway.</p><p>“I should like,” he says, laying a hand on Fitzjames and Francis each, “you two to be very good friends.”</p><p>Fitzjames is still smiling. “I would like that very much.”</p><p>“And you, Francis?”</p><p>“Very much,” Francis echoes.</p><p>*****</p><p><em>Francis. </em>Fitzjames calls him <em>Francis. </em>At every interminable supper, when they confer over magnetic readings, even before the men. It is disrespect, of course. Sir John allows it – out of spite that poorly masquerades as righteous offence. Francis loathes it. He loathes the man who calls him that.</p><p>But when Francis catches Fitzjames’s gaze over a glass of Allsopp’s, and hears the man call him <em>Francis, </em>some part of him rejoices at it, too.</p><p>*****</p><p>The nights are very long. There is no longer night than the one when Francis realizes that there is no more whisky. When Fitzjames comes to him, bares his white teeth in a snarl, and calls him <em>Francis, </em>he can bear it no longer.</p><p>“We both know,” says Fitzjames, when in fury Francis has ordered Blanky and the others above and into the long night’s cold grasp, “what is happening here.”</p><p>Francis is angrier than he has been in years, angry with everyone and everything; with Blanky, for speaking the truth; with Lady Silence, for her reticence; with Sir John, for condemning them all to death; with this fucking place; with James Fitzjames, above all others.</p><p>“What <em>I</em> know,” Francis says, stabbing a finger Fitzjames’s way, “is what you are. Don’t pretend otherwise.”</p><p>Fitzjames’s lip curls; Francis wants to slap the sneer from his face. He has hit him once this evening already; he will bruise both sides of that face to prevent it from making that contemptuous expression. “You’re drunk, Francis.”</p><p>Francis. <em>Francis. </em>It stings at Francis’s raw nerves. He hates the way his name sounds on that tongue, hates that Fitzjames should be impertinent enough to call him <em>Francis, </em>hates that that wonderful voice turns the very name to poetry.</p><p>“What I get,” he slurs, at last, more to himself than to Fitzjames, “for giving my name to a fucking <em>l</em><em>eannán sídhe.”</em></p><p>“I beg your pardon?” Clearly, Fitzjames has heard him.</p><p>“You. You took my name and now you think you <em>own </em>me for it-”</p><p>Fitzjames’s eyes gleam. “I haven’t any idea what you’re talking about.”</p><p>Francis is about to retort – insists to himself, later, that yes, he would have confronted Fitzjames, would have demanded the truth from him, whatever the cost - but there is a roar from above decks.</p><p>*****</p><p>There is no way home save a long walk. Fitzjames broaches the subject first; Francis agrees. The waiting is nearly intolerable. Without the whisky, Francis is freer of despair but beset, always, by that bone-deep craving.</p><p>When the day arrives, he and Fitzjames take a moment to watch the men assemble the sledges.</p><p>“Captain Crozier,” he says, at last. He stumbles over his words, so unlike his usual loquacity. “I would – I would like to make amends for – for some of my behaviour, in past.”</p><p>Francis dares a glance Fitzjames’s way and finds him staring at the deck, pride unbent, as humble as Francis could ever imagine him.</p><p>“No apologies,” he says, pressing a hand to Fitzjames’s arm. Francis is alarmed to feel the jut of bone and sinew – is that why James hides himself in rich layers, to conceal this wasting? “It was deserved. It was all deserved.”</p><p>“Still,” says James. “I – I hope you know, Francis, that I regret it. And I – I would like-”</p><p>Francis pats his arm to hush him. Some part of him does not want to hear what James has to say. “Aye, James. I would, too.”</p><p>When James lifts his head and Francis meets his glistening eyes, Francis turns away lest he weep, too.</p><p>*****</p><p>In the dwindling polar night, Francis hears weeping. He knows its source, and follows it to James’s tent. Finds James, abed, with Bridgens standing helpless by him. He sits next to him and takes James’s hand.</p><p>“Francis,” he groans. “Francis, help me. Help me.” His hand is clawed in Francis’s grip, all his remaining strength in that grasp. Near-silently, he breathes: “Help me out of it.”</p><p>Francis sends Bridgens away. But with the poison at James’s lips, he falters. He thinks of the hawthorn tree, and that gleaming smile.</p><p>“I can’t,” he says. He is weeping harder and more freely than James, now. “I – I can’t, James, I won’t-”</p><p>James’s brow creases and new tears spill down his cheeks. “Francis,” he whispers.</p><p>“No. I won’t,” he says. He throws the bottle aside, and covers his face with his hand. Behind his closed lids, a tableau unfolds: a dark-haired head, on the pillow next to him, a secret smile. “I won’t. Ask anything else of me, but I cannot-”</p><p>“Francis,” he says. Francis suppresses a ragged sob. <em>“Francis.”</em></p><p>“I gave you my name,” he mumbles. “That – was it not supposed to be my life, too, James?”</p><p>There is a beat of silence, and then: “Francis.”</p><p>Francis is powerless to refuse when his name is so pronounced.</p><p>“Kiss me, then,” says James.</p><p>Francis obeys, bowing his head. James tastes of rust and salt, but Francis can imagine no sweeter thing.</p><p>*****</p><p>James regains his strength with every mile. Francis’s knees, at first, feel as though they are filled with glass; then, a wound opens on his side; he loses sight in one eye, last. But when he sees James standing in harness, framed by the polar sun’s merciless glow, it is well worth it.</p><p>There is a day, however, that Francis doubts he can go further. He is resting against a sledge when James grasps him by the arm and turns him toward the horizon.</p><p>“Francis. Francis!”</p><p>This is a voice that Francis knows. He squints, and sees the arctic sun gleaming in an auburn mane, a pair of blazing azure eyes. The moment James Clark Ross is within arms’ reach, he sinks to his knees and laughs and laughs and laughs.</p><p>*****</p><p>In late spring, Francis finally relents to his sisters’ pleas that he <em>must</em> visit his childhood home. The women are clever and know how best to prey on his weaknesses – it takes only a few letters for Francis to pen his acceptance.</p><p>So too does James know Francis’s soft spots; his persuasion is rather more creative and altogether more enjoyable. All it takes is for James to get Francis’s prick in hand; combined with a <em>please, Francis, take me with you, </em>and Francis is powerless to refuse.</p><p>His sisters are delighted with James, with his glittering smile and his easy charm. Francis is nearly irked by the fact that they seem to prefer him to Francis, until he realizes that <em>he</em> prefers James, too.</p><p>They are walking together one afternoon, when Francis spots a near-forgotten sight. It is the hawthorn in the park. No haws on it now, for it is near summer – the tree is in bloom, its delicate flowers adoring its gnarled limbs. He guides James to it with a touch to the arm.</p><p>“Francis?”</p><p>“Here,” he says, laying his hand on the bark. “Do you remember?”</p><p>A few petals have landed in James’s hair.  “I am quite certain,” he says, “that I’ve no idea <em>what </em>you mean.”</p><p>Francis shoves him behind the tree and kisses him hard.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Words cannot describe how thrilled I was to write for my prompter! I have loved your work for ages and I hope my humble offering has pleased you!! </p><p>Some other notes:<br/>-The park in this fic actually exists and it’s called – get ready for it – Solitude Park. I wasn’t able to find whether it existed in Francis’s day, but for the sake of the Aesthetic™, we’ll say that Francis went for lots of sad walks in Solitude Park. Poor lad.<br/>-Also, my sincerest apologies to the trees I insulted in this fic. I think all trees are beautiful - the gnarlier the better, if you ask me. Alas, this fic is predicated on tree-shaming. Forgive me.<br/>-Is James really fae or is he just complicated? Were the two Jameses actually different people? Did Francis hallucinate the whole thing? You get to decide!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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